The earliest prehistoric remains of human habitation found in Syria and Palestine (stone implements, with bones of elephants and horses) are of the Middle Paleolithic Period. In the next stage are remains of rhinoceroses and of men who are classified as intermediate between Neanderthal and modern types. The Mesolithic Period is best represented by the Natufian culture, which is spread along, and some distance behind, the coast of the Levant. The Natufians supported life by fishing, hunting, and gathering the grains that, in their wild state, were indigenous to the country. This condition was gradually superseded by the domestication of animals, the cultivation of crops, and the production of pottery. Excavations at Mureybet in Syria have revealed a settlement where the inhabitants made pottery and cultivated einkorn, a single-grained wheat, as early as the 9th millennium BCE. Metallurgy, particularly the production of bronze (an alloy of copper and tin), appeared after the mid-4th millennium BCE. The first cities emerged shortly thereafter.

Early history

History begins with the invention of writing, which took place in southern Babylonia perhaps about 3000 BCE, the script being an original picture character that developed later into cuneiform. Modern research, however, suggests that clay tokens found at numerous ancient Middle Eastern sites from as early as 8000 BCE may have been used as an archaic recording system and ultimately led to the invention of writing.

By the mid-3rd millennium BCE, various Semitic peoples had migrated into Syria-Palestine and Babylonia. Knowledge of this period has been enormously enhanced by the excavations at Tall Mardīkh (ancient Ebla), south of Aleppo. The palace has yielded more than 17,000 inscribed clay tablets, dated to about 2600–2500 BCE, which detail the social, religious, economic, and political life of this thriving and powerful Syrian kingdom. The language of Ebla has been identified as Northwest Semitic.

About 2320 BCE Lugalzaggisi, the Sumerian ruler of Erech (Uruk), boasted of an empire that stretched to the Mediterranean. It was short-lived; he was defeated by the Semite Sargon of Akkad, who became the greatest conqueror and most famous name in Babylonian history. Sargon led his armies up the Euphrates to the “cedar mountain” (the Amanus) and beyond. Ebla was destroyed either by Sargon at this time or perhaps by his grandson, Naram-sin (c. 2275 BCE), and the region of Syria became part of the Akkadian empire. But the dynasty of Akkad was soon overthrown as its centre and superseded by the dynasties first of Guti and then of Ur.

Nothing certain is known about the authority (if any) that the kings of Ur exercised in Syria, so far away from their capital. The end of their dynasty, however, was brought about chiefly by the pressure of a new Semitic migration from Syria, this time of the Amorites (i.e., the westerners), as they were called in Babylonia. Between about 2000 and 1800 BCE they covered both Syria and Mesopotamia with a multitude of small principalities and cities, mostly governed by rulers bearing some name characteristic of the Semitic dialect that the Amorites spoke. The period of Amorite ascendancy is vividly mirrored in the Mari Letters, a great archive of royal correspondence found at the site of Mari, near the modern frontier with Iraq. Among the principal figures mentioned are the celebrated lawgiver Hammurabi of Babylon (himself an Amorite) and a king of Aleppo, part of whose kingdom was the city of Alalakh, on the Orontes near what was later Antioch. Around 1600 BCE northern Syria, including the cities of Alalakh, Aleppo, and Ebla in its Amorite phase, suffered destruction at the hands of the aggressive Hittite kings, Hattusilis I or Mursilis I, from central Anatolia.

Earlier, in the 18th century BCE, a movement of people from Syria had begun in the opposite direction. This resulted in the Hyksos infiltration and eventual seizure (c. 1674 BCE) of regal authority in northern Egypt, which was subject to this foreign domination for 108 years. The mixed multitude of the Hyksos certainly included Hurrians, who, not being Aryans themselves, were under the rule and influence of Aryans and learned from them the use of light chariots and horses in warfare, which they introduced into Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. The Hurrians established the kingdom of Mitanni, with its centre east of the Euphrates, and this was for long the dominant power in Syria, reaching its height in the 15th century BCE. Documentary evidence for the Mitanni period comes from excavations made in the 1970s at Tall Hadidi (ancient Azu), at the edge of Lake Al-Assad.

But other nations were growing at the same time, and in the 14th century Syria was the arena in which at least four great competitors contended. The Hurrians were first in possession, and they maintained friendly relations with Egypt, which, after expelling the Hyksos, had established a vast sphere of influence in Palestine and Syria under the kings of the 18th dynasty. Third of the powers disputing Syria in the 14th century were the Hittites, who finally, under their greatest warrior, Suppiluliumas (c. 1350 BCE), not only defeated the kingdom of Mitanni but established a firm dominion of their own in northern Syria with its principal centres at Aleppo and Carchemish. Fourth was the rising kingdom of Assyria, which became a serious contender in the reign of Ashur-uballit I.

This was the period of the Amarna Letters, which vividly illustrate the decline of Egyptian influence in Syria (especially under Akhenaton), the distress or duplicity of local governors, and the rivalry of the aforesaid powers. Egyptians and Hittites continued their struggle into the 13th century; the Battle of Kadesh (c. 1290 BCE) led to a treaty maintaining equal balance. Assyria had already swept away the remains of Mitanni but itself soon fell into decline, and the Hittites were not long afterward driven from their centre in Asia Minor by the migration of “peoples of the sea,” western invaders from the isles of the Aegean and from Europe. The dislocation of peoples at this time apparently also led to the migration into northern Syria of a related Indo-European group from Anatolia, the so-called Neo-Hittites. They established a number of principalities, and the area became known as “Hatti-land.”

As early as the 14th century various documents mention the Akhlame, who were forerunners of another vast movement of Semitic tribes called, generically, Aramaeans. By the end of the 13th century these had covered with their small and loose principalities the whole of central and northern Syria. The Assyrians, however, were able to guard their homeland from this penetration, and henceforth much of the warfare of Assyrian kings was aimed at the Aramaean states of Syria. At about the same time as the Aramaean invasion, the exodus of Israelite tribes from Egypt was proceeding. As the Israelites toward the end of the 11th century established a kingdom centred upon Jerusalem, the Aramaeans set up their principal kingdom at Damascus; the wars between kings of Judah or of Israel and kings of Aram make up much of Old Testament history.

But the most formidable enemies of the Aramaeans and often of the Hebrews were the great military kings of the Assyrians. In the 9th and 8th centuries BCE the Assyrian empire was established over the west. At the Battle of Karkar in 853 BCE, Shalmaneser III of Assyria was opposed by Bar-Hadad I (Hebrew Ben-hadad I; throne name Hadadezer; Akkadian Adad-idri) of Damascus, Ahab of Israel, and 12 vassal monarchs. In 732 Damascus, the Syrian capital, was at length captured by Tiglath-pileser III. But campaigns against the Aramaeans and Neo-Hittites of northern Syria had to be undertaken by the Assyrians until almost the end of the Assyrian empire. Culturally, the most important achievement of the Aramaeans was the bringing of the alphabet into general use for public and private business.

Before the close of the 8th century BCE a massive southward movement of people, partly of Aryan descent, began from the north and west. Pressure of this movement upon the Assyrian dominions and homeland became ever more severe, and it deeply affected Syria also. In the 7th century there came the invasion of the Cimmerians, followed by the Scythians. To these and to the Medes Assyria finally succumbed with the fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE. Nebuchadrezzar II, crown prince of Babylon, finally defeated the attempted rescue of Assyria by Necho II, king of Egypt, and annihilated his army at Carchemish in 605 BCE. In 597 he captured Jerusalem and carried its people into exile. Thereafter, Syria was for half a century under the rule of Nebuchadrezzar’s successors on the throne of Babylon.

But another and greater power, the Persians, then came to the fore. Under the leadership of Cyrus II they extended their conquests into Asia Minor and then came to a final collision with Babylon, which Cyrus occupied in 539 BCE. He sent back the exiled Jewish community to Jerusalem, encouraging them to rebuild their Temple. In Darius I’s great organization of the Persian dominions, Syria, with Palestine and Cyprus, was the fifth satrapy, bearing the name of “Across the River” (i.e., the Euphrates), with tribute fixed at 350 talents of silver. Damascus and the Phoenician cities were still the chief centres of Syria under the Persians, and in Sidon was the core of the Phoenician revolt against Artaxerxes III, which ended with the destruction of that city in 345 BCE. But by this time, the end of the Persian domination was at hand, and the Macedonians under Alexander the Great were about to bring the whole Middle East under Greek rule and influence.

Alexander invaded Asia Minor in 334 BCE, and his victory over the Persians at Issus in 333 was followed by the capture and enslavement of Tyre and Gaza. With the Battle of Gaugamela and the destruction of Persepolis, the downfall of Persia was complete.

Hellenistic and Roman periods

The Hellenistic Age

After Alexander’s death in 323 BCE his marshals contended for control of the country until, after the Battle of Ipsus (301), Seleucus I Nicator gained the northern part and Ptolemy I Soter gained the southern (Coele Syria). This partition between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies was maintained for 100 years. Their administrative methods varied. In the south the Ptolemies respected the existing autonomous cities, imposed a bureaucratic system on the rest of the country, and established no colonies. The Seleucids divided the north into four satrapies and founded many cities and military colonies—among them Antioch, Seleucia Pieria, Apamea, and Laodicea—drawing on European settlers. Republics replaced kings in the Phoenician coastal cities of Tyre (274 BCE), Sidon, Byblos, and Aradus. Further political and cultural changes followed.

In 200 BCE (or perhaps as late as 198) Antiochus III (the Great) defeated Ptolemy V Epiphanes at Panium and secured control of southern Syria, where he introduced the satrapal system. His subsequent defeat by the Romans at Magnesia (December 190 or January 189), however, resulted in the loss of both his territory in Asia Minor and his prestige, thereby fundamentally weakening the Seleucid empire, which ceased to be a Mediterranean power. Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–163) stimulated the spread of Greek culture and political ideas in Syria by a policy of urbanization; increased city organization and municipal autonomy involved greater decentralization of his kingdom. His attempted Hellenization of the Jews is well known.

Under the Seleucid kings, with rival claimants to the throne and constant civil war, Syria disintegrated. In the north the Seleucids controlled little more than the areas of Antioch and Damascus. Southern Syria was partitioned by three tribal dynasties: the Ituraeans, the Jews, and the Nabateans. The country was seized later by Tigranes II The Great of Armenia (83); he ruled until his defeat by Pompey, who ended years of anarchy by making Syria a Roman province (64–63).

Roman provincial organization

Pompey in the main accepted the status quo, but he reestablished a number of cities and reduced the kingdom of Judaea; 10 cities of the interior formed a league, the Decapolis. The native client kingdoms of Commagene, Ituraea, Judaea, and Nabataea were henceforth subjected to Roman Syria. Parthian invasions were thrown back in 51–50 and 40–39 BCE, and Mark Antony’s extensive territorial gifts to Cleopatra (including Ituraea, Damascus, and Coele Syria) involved only temporary adjustments.

Under the early empire, Syria, which stretched northeast to the upper Euphrates and, until 73 CE, included eastern Cilicia, became one of the most important provinces. Its governor, a consular legate, generally commanded four legions until 70 CE. Administrative changes followed, as Rome gradually annexed the client kingdoms. Ituraea was incorporated (i.e., its territories were assigned to neighbouring cities) partly in 24 BCE, partly about 93 CE. Judaea became a separate province in 6 CE, governed by procurators (apart from the short-lived control by Herod Agrippa I, 41–44 CE), until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. Then the governor was a praetorian legate in command of a legion; next, under Hadrian, he was a consular with two legions, and the province was named Syria Palaestina. Commagene was annexed permanently by Vespasian in 72. The caravan city of Palmyra came under Roman control, possibly during Tiberius’s reign. Finally, Nabataea was made the province of Arabia in 105, governed by a praetorian legate with one legion.

Syria itself was later divided by Septimius Severus into two provinces—Syria Coele in the north with two legions and Syria Phoenice with one. By the beginning of the 5th century it was subdivided into at least five provinces. The frontiers of Syria were guarded by a fortified limes system, which was thoroughly reorganized by Diocletian and his successors (particularly against cavalry attacks) and which endured until the Arab conquest; much knowledge of this system of “defense in depth” has been obtained with the aid of aerial photography.

Economy and culture

Syria’s economic prosperity depended on its natural products (including wine, olives, vegetables, fruits, and nuts), on its industries (including purple dyeing, glassmaking at Sidon, linen and wool weaving, and metalwork), and on its control and organization of trade passing by caravan from the east to the Mediterranean through such centres as Palmyra, Damascus, Bostra, and Petra. Syria remained essentially rural. The urban upper and middle classes might be Hellenized, but the lower classes still spoke Aramaic and other Semitic dialects. Roman influences were naturally weaker than Greek, though the army at first helped the spread of Romanization.

The splendour of Syrian culture is seen in the magnificence of the cities (Antioch, ranking among the greatest cities of the empire, was the residence of the governor and later of the comes Orientis, who governed the diocese of the East). This splendour is also evident in their schools of rhetoric, law, and medicine; in their art; in their literature and philosophy; and in the variety of their religions, both pagan and Christian.

Byzantine Syria

During the three centuries Syria was administered from Constantinople (see Istanbul: Constantinople), its cultural and economic life remained active. Government became more bureaucratic, but it was efficient. In the 4th century, during the campaigns of Constantine I and Julian against Persia, Syria had again become a base of operations and at times endured Persian invasion. The Persian threat subsided during the 5th century, but it blazed up again in the 6th, when Arabs also added to the danger. The Persian Khosrow I captured Antioch itself (540); and in 573 the Persians were back again. The invasion of Khosrow II, which began in 606, was later rolled back by the victories of Heraclius, but the peace of 628 brought no tranquillity to Syria.

Medieval period

Islamic conquest

In the first half of the 7th century, Syria was absorbed into the Caliphate. Arab Muslim forces had appeared on the southern border even before the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, but the real invasion took place in 633–634, with Khālid ibn al-Walīd as its most important leader. In 635 Damascus surrendered, its inhabitants being promised security for their lives, property, and churches, on payment of a poll tax. A counterattack by the emperor Heraclius was defeated at the Battle of the Yarmūk River in 636; by 640 the conquest was virtually complete.

The new rulers divided Syria into four districts (junds): Damascus, Ḥimṣ, Jordan, and Palestine (to which a fifth, Qinnasrīn, was later added). The Arab garrisons were kept apart in camps, and life went on much as before. Conversion to Islam had scarcely begun, apart from Arab tribes already settled in Syria; except for the tribe of Ghassān, these all became Muslim. Christians and Jews were treated with toleration, and Nestorian and Jacobite Christians had better treatment than they had under Byzantium. The Byzantine form of administration remained, but the new Muslim tax system was introduced. From 639 the governor of Syria was Muʿawiyah of the Meccan house of the Umayyads. He used the country as a base for expeditions against the Byzantine Empire, for this purpose building the first Muslim navy in the Mediterranean. When civil war broke out in the Muslim empire, as a result of the murder of ʿUthmān and the nomination of ʿAlī as caliph, Syria stood firm behind Muʿawiyah, who extended his authority over neighbouring provinces and was proclaimed caliph in 660. He was the first of the Umayyad line, which ruled the empire, with Syria as its core and Damascus its capital, for almost a century.

The Umayyads

The early Umayyad period was one of strength and expansion. The army, mainly Arab and largely Syrian, extended the frontiers of Islam. It carried the war against Byzantium into Asia Minor and besieged Constantinople; eastward it penetrated into Khorasan, Turkistan, and northwestern India; and, spreading along the northern coast of Africa, it occupied much of Spain. This vast empire was given a regular administration that gradually acquired an Arab Muslim character. Syrians played an important part in it, and the country profited from the wealth pouring from the rich provinces to the empire’s centre. The caliphs built splendid palaces and the first great monuments of Muslim religious architecture: the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque of Damascus, constructed by the Umayyads. The religious sciences of Islam began to develop, while Christian culture still flourished. Except under ʿUmar II Christians were treated with favour, and there were Christian officials at court.

Under the later Umayyads the strength of the central government declined. There were factions and feuds inside the ruling group: the Arabs of Iraq resented the domination of Syria; the non-Arab converts to Islam (mawālī) resented the social gap between them and the Arabs; and devout Muslims regarded the Umayyads as too worldly in their lives and policies. After the defeat and death of ʿAlī’s son Ḥusayn at the Battle of Karbalāʾ in 680, sentiment in favour of the family of ʿAlī was still strong. The later Umayyads could not control these discontents. Their rule was finally overthrown and the family virtually destroyed by the new ʿAbbāsid Caliphate in 750. Among these it was ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, a member of the ruling family, who survived the assault and fled westward to reestablish the Umayyads in Al-Andalus (see Spain: Muslim Spain).

The ʿAbbāsids

The end of the Umayyad dynasty meant a shift in power from Syria to Iraq. Syria became a dependent province of the Caliphate. Its loyalty was suspect, for Umayyad sentiment lingered on, and the last pro-Umayyad revolt was not crushed until 905. The Christian population was treated with less favour; discriminatory legislation was applied to it under some caliphs, and the process of conversion to Islam went on. Closely connected with it was the gradual adoption of Arabic in place of Greek and Aramaic, although the latter survived in a few villages.

From the 9th to the 12th century

As the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate disintegrated in its turn, Syria drifted out of the sphere of influence of Baghdad. In 877 it was annexed by the Ṭūlūnid dynasty of Egypt, and this began a political connection that was to last with intervals for more than six centuries. In northern Syria the Ṭūlūnids were succeeded by a local Arab dynasty, the Ḥamdānids of Aleppo, founded by Sayf al-Dawlah (944–967); they engaged in war with Byzantium, in which their early successes were followed by the Greek recovery of Antioch (969). In central and southern Syria another Egyptian dynasty, the Ikhshīdids, established themselves (941–969); their successors, the Fāṭimid caliphs of Cairo, later absorbed the whole country.

In spite of political disturbances, the 10th and 11th centuries were a period of flourishing culture. Around the court of the Ḥamdānids lived some of the greatest Arabic writers: the poets al-Mutanabbī and al-Maʿarrī, the philosopher al-Fārābī, and the anthologist Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbāhanī. It was a period of ferment in Islamic thought, when the challenge to Sunni Islam from Shīʿism and its offshoots reached its height. The Fāṭimids were themselves Shīʿites. At the end of the 10th century Syria was threatened by the Qarmatians, adherents of an extreme form of Shīʿism who had established a state in the Persian Gulf. The danger was beaten back, but it returned as an esoteric doctrine spread by the Ismāʿīlīs from their centre at Salamiyyah in northern Syria.

In the second half of the 11th century Syria fell into the hands of the Seljuq Turks, who had established a sultanate in Asia Minor. They occupied Aleppo and then Damascus. But after the death of the sultan Malik-Shāh in 1092 the Seljuq empire fell to pieces, and between 1098 and 1124 the Crusaders occupied Antioch, Jerusalem, Al-Karak in Transjordan, and the coast.

The Crusaders organized their conquests into four states owing allegiance to the king of Jerusalem. Their situation was precarious. The Crusaders were always a minority in their states, and they never penetrated far into the interior. They could maintain their position only so long as the Muslim states surrounding were weak and divided. Zangī, the Turkish ruler of Mosul, occupied Aleppo in 1128 and recovered Edessa from the Crusaders in 1144. His son Nūr al-Dīn united inner Syria and annexed Egypt. After his death his kingdom was rebuilt and strengthened by his viceroy in Egypt, Saladin, who ended the Fāṭimid Caliphate, created a strong kingdom of Egypt and Syria, and defeated the Crusaders at the great Battle of Ḥaṭṭīn (1187). He recovered all Palestine and most of the inland strongholds of the Crusaders. Soon afterward, however, the Third Crusade recaptured part of the coast.

The Ayyūbids and Mamlūks

After Saladin’s death his kingdom was split up among members of his family, the Ayyūbids, who established principalities in Aleppo, Ḥamāh, Ḥimṣ, Damascus, Baʿlabakk (Baalbek), and Transjordan and ruled them until 1260. The period of Nūr al-Dīn, Saladin, and their successors was of great importance. Owing largely to the establishment of Italian trading centres on the coast and better security, economic life recovered and Syria reached a level of prosperity such as it had not enjoyed for centuries. The Ayyūbid rulers stimulated culture and architecture. Following the Seljuqs, they created a new land system based on the grant of rights over land in return for military service. They were champions of Sunni Islam against the Shīʿite sects that had gained ground in the previous era. They built colleges of a new type, the madrasah, as centres of learning. Their efforts to stamp out Shīʿite sects were not completely successful. The Nizārīs (Assassins), a subsect of the Ismāʿīlīs, kept their strongholds in the mountains and had some political importance.

Although strong internally, the state was still in danger from the Bedouin tribes of the desert and from the Mongols, who invaded Syria for the first time in 1260 and sacked Aleppo. They were driven back not by the local rulers but by a new Egyptian military power, the Mamlūks, a self-perpetuating elite of slaves and freedmen, mainly of Turkish and Circassian origin, who had replaced the Ayyūbids as rulers of Egypt in 1250. In 1260 they defeated the Mongols at the Battle of ʿAyn Jālūt in Palestine; the victorious Mamlūk general, Baybars I, made himself sultan of a reunited kingdom of Syria and Egypt, which he ruled until his death in 1277. This state continued to exist for more than two centuries. In 1291 it won back Acre and other coastal towns from the Crusaders, who were expelled; and a few years later it took the last Crusading stronghold, the island of Ruad (Arwād). The Mamlūks reorganized the Ayyūbid principalities as six provinces, of which Damascus was the largest and most important. Political power was in the hands of the Mamlūk elite, who held land in virtual ownership in return for military service in the cavalry. But there was a local element in the government, the civil servants being drawn mainly from Syrian Arab families with their tradition of religious learning.

Like the Ayyūbids, the Mamlūks favoured Sunni Islam. Religious culture flourished and produced a number of great scholars, such as the Ḥanbalī jurist Ibn Taymiyyah. For religious and political reasons, the Mamlūks dealt severely with the religious minorities living in the coastal mountain ranges: Druze, Maronite Christians, Ismāʿīlīs, and ʿAlawites (or Nuṣayrīs; adherents of another creed derived from Shīʿism and living in the Al-Anṣariyyah Mountains). One of the principal reasons for this severity was the Mamlūks’ fear that these minorities might cooperate with the Crusaders, should they attempt to return.

In the early Mamlūk period, Syria remained prosperous; the rulers constructed public works, and Venetian merchants carried on their coastal trade. But in 1401 came a blow to economic life: a new Mongol invader, Timur (Tamerlane), sacked Aleppo and Damascus. His empire did not long survive his death in 1405, but the damage had been done. The cities had been burned, a large part of their population killed, and many craftsmen taken away to Central Asia.

Ottoman period

Ottoman government, 16th–17th centuries

Throughout the 15th century, Mamlūk Syria continued to decline, while a new power was growing to the north, that of the Ottoman Turkish sultanate in Asia Minor. Having occupied Constantinople and the Balkans, it began to look southward. In 1516 Sultan Selim I defeated the Mamlūks in the Battle of Marj Dābiq and occupied the whole of Syria that year and Egypt the next. Although parts of Syria enjoyed some local autonomy, the area as a whole remained for 400 years an integral section of the Ottoman Empire. It was divided into provinces, each under a governor: Damascus, Aleppo, and later Tripoli and Ṣaydā, or Sidon, of which the administrative centre was later moved to Acre. Damascus, the largest, had special importance as the place from which the pilgrimage to Mecca was organized every year. The governor of Damascus led the pilgrimage when possible, and most of the revenues of the province were earmarked for its expenses.

The tax system continued in principle to be that of Muslim law—a land tax, a poll tax on Christians and Jews, and customs duties. But the Ottomans, like their predecessors, gave the right to collect and keep the land tax in return for military service. Later this system was allowed to decay, and tax collection was turned over to tax farmers (mültezim), who became in the course of time nearly a landowning class. The official religious hierarchy of judges, jurisconsults, and preachers served as an intermediary between government and subjects, as did guild masters and the heads of the local mystical orders (Sufis).

Within this framework of law, order, and taxation, the local communities were left to regulate their own lives. In the desert, the Bedouin tribes were controlled to some extent by gifts, the encouragement of factions, and occasional military expeditions but otherwise were not interfered with. The ʿAlawites and the Ismāʿīlīs dwelling in the Al-Anṣariyyah Mountains were watched by the Ottoman governors, but they were not interfered with so long as they paid their taxes. In the Jabal Al-Durūz region, south of Damascus, there grew up an autonomous community of Druze farmers who did not pay taxes to the Ottoman authorities. The authority of the Christian patriarchs over their communities was recognized. In the corps of ʿulamāʾ (learned Muslims holding government appointments) most positions except the highest were held by members of local families having a tradition of religious learning. They continued to be, as under the Mamlūks, spokesmen and leaders of the Muslim citizens.

The early Ottoman governors paid much attention to agriculture, and their fiscal system was designed to encourage it. In parts of Syria it flourished during the 16th and 17th centuries, and, apart from cereals for local consumption, cotton and silk were produced for export. Aleppo and Damascus not only were important centres of handicrafts but also served as market towns for the desert and countryside and as stages on the desert routes to the Persian Gulf and Persia. Aleppo also was an important centre of trade with Europe; French and English merchants had largely replaced Italian ones, and there grew up also a class of Syrian Christian and Jewish merchants who developed contacts with Egypt, Italy, and France.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries the position of the Christians improved. Catholic missions, protected by France, enlarged the Catholic communities of both Latin and Eastern rites, founded schools, and spread knowledge of European languages. Colleges in Rome produced an educated priesthood, and the Christian communities in Aleppo and Lebanon brought forth scholars. Muslim Arab culture of the time produced the theologian ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī, as well as Ibrāhīm al-Ḥalabī, a systematic jurist.

Decline of Ottoman authority

In spite of widespread unrest in the early 17th century, Ottoman rule was in general stable and effective until the end of that century. After that it declined rapidly, in Syria as elsewhere. Control by the central government weakened; the standard of administration sank; and the Janissaries (the elite troops of the sultan) lost their discipline and became a menace to order. The result was a shrinkage of agricultural production, as the villages suffered from the depredations of soldiery and tax collectors and from Bedouin incursions. This was a period of activity in the Syrian desert, and Bedouin tribes, moving northwest from Arabia, extended their control far into the settled land. In the towns there was also a decline. The desert routes were unsafe, and the European merchant colonies were shrinking. But there was still a vigorous commercial life; the standard of craftsmanship was high, and the great tradition of Islamic architecture was continued under the patronage of provincial dignitaries and governors.

Ottoman authority did reassert itself to some extent, but in a new form. For most of the 18th century, Damascus was ruled by governors belonging to the ʿAẓm family, loyal to the sultan but with more independence than earlier sultans would have allowed. They controlled the Janissaries, kept back the Bedouin, maintained security, and sometimes extended their authority to other provinces. In the province of Sidon, power was held on similar terms by a ruthless and able Bosnian governor, Aḥmad al-Jazzār (1775–1804), and his group of Mamlūks. Such rulers raised their own armies, but this involved additional taxation and further depressed the condition of the peasants. Agriculture flourished in the hilly districts, which were virtually beyond Ottoman control, free from Bedouin attacks, and overseen by strong local rulers who protected agriculture and made Acre a prosperous centre of trade.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Syria had some islands of prosperity: Aleppo and Damascus (each with roughly 100,000 inhabitants), Mount Lebanon, and certain other secluded districts. In general, however, the country was in decay, the small towns subsisting on local trade and the villagers receding in face of the Bedouin. The Ottoman hold on the country was at its weakest. In Damascus and Aleppo the governors were scarcely able to control the population of city or countryside. The prince of Lebanon, Bashīr II (1788–1840), who had been installed by al-Jazzār and remained quiet while al-Jazzār was alive, gradually extended his control over districts beyond Lebanon. In 1810 the Wahhābīs from central Arabia threatened Damascus.

Egyptian domination

In 1831 the ruler of Egypt, Muḥammad ʿAlī, sent his son Ibrāhīm Pasha at the head of his modern army into Palestine. Helped by Bashīr and other local leaders, Ibrāhīm conquered the country and advanced into Asia Minor. He ruled Syria for almost 10 years. The whole country was controlled from Damascus. There and in the provincial centres the governors were Egyptians, but they were assisted by councils representing the population. In political matters Ibrāhīm relied largely on Bashīr. New taxes were introduced and strictly collected, agriculture was encouraged, and the Bedouin pushed back. After an abortive attempt to introduce trade monopolies, Ibrāhīm encouraged European traders by maintaining better security. The Christian and Jewish populations were treated with consideration.

After a time, Ibrāhīm’s rule became unpopular because his taxes were heavy and because he tried to disarm and conscript the population. The European powers (except France) also objected to Egyptian rule in Syria because it was a threat to the Ottoman Empire, the weakness or disintegration of which might cause a European crisis. In 1839 war broke out between Muḥammad ʿAlī and his suzerain, the sultan. Ibrāhīm defeated the Ottoman army, but in 1840 the European powers intervened. After an ultimatum, a British, Ottoman, and Austrian force landed on the Syrian coast; the British encouraged a local insurrection, and the Egyptians were forced to withdraw from Syria, which reverted to the sultan’s government.

Ottoman rule restored

The next 20 years were a period of mounting crises. Lebanon became the scene of a struggle for power between Druzes and Maronites, with undertones of social conflict. In Syria an attempt was made to apply the new Ottoman administrative system. But the new system of taxation and conscription caused unrest. This situation was worsened by the growth of European influence; the Muslim majority became aware of Ottoman vulnerability to European aggression, and the connection of France with the Catholics and of Russia with the Orthodox both encouraged the minorities to hope for a more favourable position and focused on them the hostility of their Muslim compatriots. There was also economic unrest. European goods flooded the market and replaced some of the products of local craftsmen. This diminished the prosperity of the artisan class, largely Muslim, but increased that of the import merchants, mainly Christians and Jews.

The tension thus generated burst forth in 1860 when a civil war of Druzes and Maronites in Lebanon touched off a massacre of Christians by Muslims in Damascus. The Ottoman government sent a special commissioner to punish the guilty and suppress disorder, and to firmly establish Istanbul’s authority. France sent an expeditionary force, and a European commission discussed the future of the country, coming to the conclusion that Lebanon (the mountain itself but not the coastal towns) should be an autonomous district (mutaṣarrifiyyah) but that no change should be made in Syria.

From then until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Syria continued to be governed as a group of Ottoman provinces. From 1888 there were three: Damascus, Aleppo, and Beirut. The new administrative and legal system was more carefully applied, and a new type of educated official gradually raised its standards. The introduction of railways and telegraphs made possible a stricter control. A French-built railway linked Beirut and Damascus, with a later extension running north to Aleppo, and in 1908 the Hejaz Railway was opened to take pilgrims from Damascus to Medina. Railways and better security encouraged agriculture. Aleppo (population about 200,000) and Damascus (250,000) both had a flourishing trade, but the crafts declined, and the desert routes suffered from the opening of the Suez Canal.

In the cities there was a considerable change in social life. The upper and middle classes adopted the clothes and social customs of western Europe, and Western-style schools flourished. In 1866 the American Protestant Mission opened in Beirut the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University of Beirut), and in 1881 the French Jesuits opened the Université Saint-Joseph in the same town. The Ottoman government opened schools, and young men of the great Arab families of the towns began to attend the higher schools in Constantinople and to go on to civil or military service.

Under Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1909) the Muslim Arabs of Syria were reasonably content. Syrian Arabs played a leading part at the sultan’s court and Abdülhamid lavished patronage on Sufi orders. His emphasis on Islamic solidarity fostered obedience to the sultan as a religious duty. There also appeared a dissident current of Salafi Islamic reform allied to the Ottoman constitutional movement. The Salafis favoured a return to pristine Islam as a way to purify ritual and allow flexible adaptation to modern political and technological advances.

After the Young Turk revolution of 1908, relations between Arabs and Turks grew worse. Power fell into the hands of a Turkish military group whose policy stimulated the growth of opposition. Arab nationalist and Syrian patriotic feeling became more conscious, and political parties, both open and secret, were organized by Syrians in Cairo, Constantinople, and Paris, as well as in Syria itself.

World War I

When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I in 1914, Syria became a military base. In 1915 an Ottoman army under German command attacked the British position on the Suez Canal, and from 1916 a British and imperial force based in Egypt, with a French contingent, undertook the invasion of Palestine. By the end of 1917 Gen. Sir Edmund (later Field Marshal Viscount) Allenby had occupied Jerusalem, and by November 1918 his troops had taken Syria. Most Christians and Jews welcomed the occupation; among the Muslims a large proportion had remained loyal to the empire, as being all that was left of the political independence of Islam, but the nationalist societies had made common cause with the ruler of the Hejaz, Sharīf Ḥusayn, forming an alliance with Britain against their Turkish suzerain. An Arab army under the command of Ḥusayn’s son Fayṣal was formed in the Hejaz, with Syrian and other Arab officers and British help led by T.E. Lawrence. It took part, under Allenby’s general command, in the Syrian campaign helping to capture Damascus.

When the war ended, Allenby installed an Arab military administration, under Fayṣal, in Damascus and the interior. The French took over the coast, with Beirut as their centre, and the British took over Palestine. There followed several unsettled years while the fate of Syria was being decided. During the war the British government had made promises, to Ḥusayn and other Arab leaders, that the Arabs would be independent in those countries that they helped to liberate, subject to certain reservations, the precise extent of which has never been clear. Then, in November 1918, Britain and France declared their intention of establishing in Syria and Iraq “national governments drawing their authority from the initiative and free choice of the native populations.”

By the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, France was to be free to establish its administration in Lebanon and on the coast and to provide advice and assistance to whatever regime existed in the interior. In March 1920 a Syrian Congress meeting in Damascus elected Fayṣal king of a united Syria including Palestine; but in April the Allied Conference of San Remo decided that both should be placed under the new mandate system and that France should have the mandate for Syria.

The French mandate

In June 1920 a French ultimatum demanding Syrian recognition of the mandate was followed by a French occupation and the expulsion in July of Fayṣal. In July 1922 the League of Nations approved the texts of the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon. Lebanon had already, in August 1920, been declared a separate state, with the addition of Beirut, Tripoli, and certain other districts, to the prewar autonomous province. Politically, “Syria” henceforth acquired a narrower meaning; it referred to what was left of geographical Syria once Transjordan, Lebanon, and Palestine had been detached from it.

The mandate placed on France the responsibility of creating and controlling an administration, of developing the resources of the country, and of preparing it for self-government. A number of local governments were set up: one for the Al-Anṣariyyah Mountains region, where the majority belonged to the ʿAlawite sect, one for the Jabal al-Durūz region, where most of the inhabitants were Druzes, and eventually one for the rest of Syria, with its capital at Damascus.

The French mandatory administration carried out much constructive work. Roads were built; town planning was carried out and urban amenities were improved; land tenure was reformed in some districts; and agriculture was encouraged, particularly in the fertile Al-Jazīrah. The University of Damascus was established, with its teaching being mainly in Arabic.

It was more difficult to prepare Syria for self-government because of the difference between French and Syrian conceptions of what was implied. Most French officials and statesmen thought in terms of a long period of control. Further, they did not wish to hand over power to the Muslim majority in a way that might persuade their Christian protégés that they were giving up France’s traditional policy of protecting the Christians of the Levant. In Syria, many members of the minorities and a smaller proportion of the majority wanted the French to remain as a help in constructing a modern society and government. The greater part of the urban population, however, and in particular the educated elite, wanted Syria to be independent and to include Lebanon, Palestine, and Transjordan, if possible, and certainly the Druze and ʿAlawite districts.

The first crisis in Franco-Syrian relations came in 1925, when a revolt in Jabal Al-Durūz, sparked by local grievances, led to an alliance between the Druze rebels and the nationalists of Damascus, newly organized in the People’s Party. For a time the rebels controlled much of the countryside. In October 1925, bands entered the city of Damascus itself, and this led to a two-day bombardment by the French (see Druze revolt). The revolt did not subside completely until 1927, but even before the end of 1925 the French had started a policy of conciliation. In 1928 elections were held for a Constituent Assembly. The nationalists won the election and took office in a new government. The assembly drafted a constitution, but their draft was not wholly acceptable to the high commissioner, because it spoke of the unity of geographical Syria and did not explicitly safeguard the French position of control.

In May 1930 the high commissioner dissolved the assembly and enacted the constitution with certain changes. There followed unsuccessful negotiations for a Franco-Syrian treaty, but in 1936 the advent of the Popular Front government in France changed the situation. Negotiations took place with the nationalists, now organized in the National Bloc. A treaty was signed in September 1936. It provided for Syrian independence, Franco-Syrian consultation on foreign policy, French priority in advice and assistance, and the retention by France of two military bases. The Druze and ʿAlawite districts were to be incorporated into Syria but not Lebanon, with which France signed a similar treaty in November. A Parliament was elected; the leader of the Bloc, Hāshim al-ʿAtāsī, was chosen as president of the republic; and a nationalist government took office.

The Syrian government ratified the treaty before the end of 1936, but France never did so. When Turkey put forward claims to Alexandretta, where Turks were the largest element in the mixed population, France found it advisable, for strategic reasons, to yield to its demands. In 1937 the district (later given the Turkish name of Hatay) was granted an autonomous status; in 1939 it was incorporated into Turkey.

By the end of 1938 it was clear that the French government had no intention of ratifying the treaty. In July 1939 the president and government resigned, and the constitution was suspended.

World War II and independence

In June 1940, after the Franco-German armistice, the French in Syria announced that they would cease hostilities against Germany and Italy and recognize the Vichy government. Political uncertainty and the growing scarcity of goods and rising prices caused unrest, which was led by one of the prominent nationalists, Shukri al-Quwatli. In May 1941 the Vichy government allowed German aircraft to land and refuel en route to Iraq, and in June, British, Commonwealth, and Free French forces invaded Syria. French troops resisted for a month, but Damascus was occupied on June 21, and hostilities ceased at midnight on July 11–12.

From then until 1946, Syria was jointly occupied by British and French forces. At the moment of invasion, the Free French had proclaimed Syrian and Lebanese independence, and this was underwritten by the British government, which recognized French predominance in Syria and Lebanon, provided France carry out its promise of independence. In the interests of its Arab policy, Britain used its position of strength to persuade the Free French to carry out their undertaking. Elections held in 1943 resulted in a nationalist victory, and Shukri al-Quwatli became president of the republic.

There followed two years of disagreement about the transfer of authority from the French administration to the Syrian and Lebanese governments. A crisis took place in 1945, when the French refusal to transfer control of the local armed forces led to disorders, culminating in a French bombardment of Damascus and British intervention. After long negotiations and discussion in the UN Security Council, agreement was reached on simultaneous British and French withdrawal from Syria and Lebanon. Withdrawal from Syria was completed by April 1946. Syria had already become a founder member of the UN and of the Arab League.

Early years of independence

The humiliating failure of the Arab intervention in Palestine against the newly created State of Israel in May 1948 brought serious discredit to the governments of the Arab countries involved, but nowhere more than in Syria.

Fundamental to the Syrian problem was the ethnically, religiously, and socially heterogeneous nature of the emerging republic. The new state united the ʿAlawite and Druze territories, which had formerly enjoyed separate status, with the predominantly Sunni regions of Damascus, Ḥimṣ, Ḥamāh, and Aleppo. The ʿAlawites and Druzes formed compact communities in their respective regions. Throughout the country, and particularly in the cities, there were large communities of Christians.

In addition to this religious heterogeneity, there was an equally important social heterogeneity; the population of Syria was composed of townspeople, peasants, and nomads, three groups with little in common. Economic differences added further complexity; in the cities the ostentatious wealth of the notables contrasted sharply with the poverty of the masses. Those same notables were also the owners of large agricultural estates on which the peasants were practically serfs. It was the Sunni landowning notables who led the resistance to the French. When Syria achieved independence, they took power and endeavoured to forge a unitary state. They proved unequal to the task.

By 1949 the small but rising middle class, among which new social ideas were developing, and minorities, who resented the growing threat to their particularism, were increasingly opposed to the government. The rulers, having tasted power after so long a struggle for independence, refused those concessions that might have saved them. Moreover, they appeared to be more devoted to achieving Pan-Arab goals than to solving the problems closer to home. In the years immediately following World War II, Iraq and Saudi Arabia were making rival bids for Pan-Arab leadership. The ruling National Bloc in Syria readily divided into two new parties: a National Party headed by Shukri al-Quwatli, which represented the business interests of the Damascus notables and supported Saudi Arabia; and a resuscitated People’s Party, which represented the interests of the Aleppo notables and supported Iraq. The socialist and secular Arab nationalist Baʿth Party was recruiting followers among students and army officers, winning support particularly among the ʿAlawite and other minorities that were strongly represented among the younger officers of the army.

The colonels

The end of the short-lived civilian order in Syria came in March 1949, when Col. Husni al-Zaʿim overthrew the Quwatli government in a bloodless coup. Zaʿim was himself overthrown in August by Col. Sami al-Hinnawi. A third coup, led by Col. Adib al-Shishakli, followed in December; in November 1951 Shishakli removed his associates by a fourth coup.

The military dictators of Syria were officers of no particular ideological commitment, and the regimes they led may be described as conservative. All ruled in association with veteran politicians. Among the politically minded army officers at the time, many were Pan-Arabist Baʿth Socialists. Opposing the Baʿth officers were officers of a radically different political persuasion, who followed the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP; the Parti Populaire Syrien), an authoritarian party devoted to the establishment of a Pan-Syrian national state.

Shishakli was overthrown in February 1954 by a military coup led by Col. Faysal al-Atasi, and Parliament was restored. The SSNP forthwith lost its influence in Syrian politics and in the following year was suppressed in the army. From that time the Baʿthists in the army had no serious rival. Changes in agriculture took place in the 1950s, separate from the struggle for control of the state, and they had an important effect on the lives of many people. Capital-intensive cotton production grew rapidly in the newly planted lands of the northeast.

The union with Egypt, 1958–61

The years that followed the overthrow of Shishakli in Syria saw the rise of Pres. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt to leadership of the Pan-Arab unity movement. The coalition regime in Syria turned more and more to Egypt for support and also established the first friendly contacts with the communist countries. In February 1958 Syria, under the leadership of the Baʿth Party, gave up its sovereignty to become, for the next three and a half years, the “Northern Province” of the United Arab Republic (U.A.R.), of which Nasser was president.

The union of Syria with Egypt proved a bitter disappointment, for the Egyptians tended to treat the Syrians as subordinates. Tensions were heightened when drought damaged Syria’s economy. In September 1961 a coup led by Syrian army officers reestablished Syria as an independent state.

The “secessionist” regime, 1961–63

The coup of 1961 paved the way for a return of the old class of notables to power as parliamentary elections were held. The “secessionist” regime, though civilian at the surface, was still under army control, and in the army the Baʿth was powerful. The regime made hardly any concessions to the socialism of the Baʿth and the pro-Nasser Pan-Arabists. The secessionist regime set out quickly to undo the socialist measures introduced under the union with Egypt (such as land reforms and the nationalization of large business enterprises), thus playing into the hands of the Baʿth. In March 1963 Baʿthist supporters in the army seized power.

Baʿthist Syria after 1963

Emergence and fracture of the Syrian Baʿth

A month before the Baʿth coup in Syria, the Iraqi branch of the party had seized power in Baghdad. A Baʿthist union between Syria and Iraq seemed imminent, but it was opposed by the pro-Nasser Arab unionists in Damascus and Baghdad. The Baʿth leaders of Iraq and Syria flew to Cairo for unity talks with President Nasser, but Nasser would agree to a union only on his own terms, and the talks failed. In Syria the pro-Nasser Arab unionists were expelled from the coalition, and an exclusively Baʿth regime was established.

The Baʿthists in Syria were soon faced with a serious problem. Although their party in Syria was led by Syrians, it also promoted Pan-Arabism and had branches in Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. The continued subordination of the Syrian branch of the party to the Pan-Arab central committee gave non-Syrian Baʿthists a say in Syrian affairs. As a result, the Syrian Baʿthists established their own Pan-Arab central committee, thereby creating a deadly rivalry with the Iraqi Baʿthists, as each claimed to be the legitimate leader of the Pan-Arab nationalist cause.

With ʿAlawite military officers in control, the Syrian Baʿth Party crushed domestic opposition by setting up a police state and by appealing to the middle- and lower-class residents of small towns and villages, who had long resented the power of the politicians and large landowners in Damascus and Aleppo. Rivalry within the Baʿth Party led to a coup d’état in February 1966 that installed a faction headed by Col. Salah al-Jadid. The neo-Baʿth regime pursued more radical foreign and domestic policies. By 1969 the party was divided between a mostly civilian wing, led by Jadid, and a mostly military wing, led by Gen. Ḥafiz al-Assad. The latter seized power in November 1970 and was sworn in as president on March 14, 1971; he was subsequently reelected with no opposition on several occasions, including a referendum on Dec. 2, 1991.

Baʿthist authoritarian rule enjoyed some popularity because it enacted policies that favoured economic development, land reform, promotion of education, strengthening of the military, and vehement opposition to Israel. As these policies took effect, nationalists, peasants, and workers came to support the Assad regime. In contrast to the chaos of political life from 1945 to 1963, Syria experienced remarkable stability based on the alliance between the Baʿth Party, the military, and the bureaucracy, which was led by the shrewd and tenacious President Assad and supported by a predominantly ʿAlawite network of officials and officers, many of whom repressed their opponents by harsh methods. The opponents of the Baʿth-military-ʿAlawite system were found especially among the Sunni majority of the population, in the cities outside Damascus, and inside merchant groups. Government troops in 1982 suppressed an uprising of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Ḥamāh; the conflict left the city centre destroyed and thousands dead (estimates of civilian casualties range from 5,000 to 10,000).

Ideology and foreign policy to 1990

Under Baʿth rule the country’s foreign policy was driven by the Arab-Israeli dispute, which resulted in a number of Syrian military defeats. In the June War (1967), the Golan Heights of Syria came under Israeli occupation, and in the October War (1973), despite initial successes, Syria lost even more territory (see Arab-Israeli wars). Syria’s Pan-Arab credentials and its alliance with the Soviet Union were strained by Syria’s support of non-Arab Iran against Iraq—motivated in part by the long-standing rivalry between the Iraqi and Syrian Baʿthists, competing goals for regional dominance, and personal animosity between Assad and Iraqi president Ṣaddām Ḥussein—during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88).

Syrian involvement in Lebanon also influenced its foreign policy. In 1976 Syria intervened militarily in the Lebanese civil war, leading to a brief but damaging clash with Israel in 1982; after 1985 Assad slowly reestablished limited Syrian control in Lebanon. Following the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, Syria and Lebanon signed a series of treaties that granted special privileges to Syria by establishing joint institutions in the fields of defense, foreign policy, and economic matters.

Arab nationalism also played a major role in Syrian culture under the Baʿthists. Novels, poems, short stories, plays, and paintings often emphasized historical themes, the Palestinian problem, Socialist Realism, folk art, and opposition to foreign imperialism. The Baʿthist governments tried to bring these ideas to both the countryside and the cities through building cultural centres, sponsoring films, and promoting television and radio.

Despite growing revenues from oil exports and increased irrigation resulting from the Euphrates Dam (completed in the mid-1970s), Syria’s economy began to stagnate in the 1980s. Rapid population increase hindered economic growth, while the intensification of agriculture ran into natural barriers, such as the limited availability of fresh water and the high cost of desalination. Industrial development was slowed by bottlenecks in production. Inflation, government corruption, smuggling, foreign debts, a stifling bureaucracy, and only very limited success in encouraging private sector investments also posed severe economic problems, as did spending on the military and on the intervention in Lebanon. Assad hoped to overcome some of these economic difficulties by obtaining aid from the rich oil states of the Middle East. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, Syria turned to China for military supplies.

Foreign engagement and domestic change since 1990

Foreign policy

Syria condemned the Iraqi invasion and annexation of Kuwait in August 1990. More than 20,000 Syrian troops joined the UN-authorized coalition in Saudi Arabia, and Syrian forces helped liberate Kuwait from Iraq during the brief 1991 war.

Syria participated in Arab-Israeli peace talks starting with the Madrid conference in October and November 1991 and intermittently engaged in direct negotiations with Israel throughout the 1990s over the return of the occupied Golan Heights and a possible peace accord between the two countries. Although the negotiations periodically showed promise, the climate of the discussion fluctuated considerably, and by the end of the decade, the dialogue between the two sides had garnered little success.

Relations between Syria and Iraq unexpectedly warmed somewhat particularly following Assad’s death in 2000. This sudden thaw was also attributed in part to Syria’s insecurity over deteriorating relations with neighbouring Turkey, with whom Syria had engaged in numerous disputes over water rights and whose growing ties with Israel were seen as a threat. By 1998 ongoing Turkish accusations of Syrian support for the militant Kurdish nationalist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had further destabilized Syrian-Turkish relations. Following an agreement reached between the two countries late that year, Syria forced PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan from the country and agreed upon the closure of PKK camps within Syria.

In addition to a series of agreements of partnership and cooperation with Lebanon following the end of that country’s civil war, Syria maintained a sizable contingent of armed forces on Lebanese soil. In the years that followed, however, Syria’s ongoing presence in Lebanon grew increasingly untenable, particularly in the wake of the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, who had fallen out with his country’s pro-Syrian administration. International relations became strained amid popular Lebanese protests against Syria’s presence and widespread suspicions of Syrian involvement in Hariri’s death. Sharp international pressure was applied to the country to pull out of Lebanon, and by mid-2005 Syrian forces had withdrawn. The following year, suspicions persisted that the Assad administration had been directly involved in the Hariri assassination, a claim that was supported—though not confirmed—in 2006 by the initial findings of an ongoing UN investigation.

Domestic challenges

Due to the country’s earlier instability and record of military coups, throughout the 1990s the question of who would eventually succeed President Assad was a principal domestic concern. The prominent public posture assumed by Basil al-Assad, the president’s eldest son, appeared to indicate his emergence as successor; however, following Basil’s death in an automobile accident in 1994, Assad increasingly groomed his younger son, Bashar al-Assad, who had been studying in London, to govern after him. Following Assad’s death in 2000, Bashar succeeded his father in the presidency.

With his election in 2000, high hopes lay with the younger Assad: citizens and international observers looked to the new president to maintain a degree of order and continuity, provide a level of political openness acceptable to the Syrian people, and carry on the campaign begun under his father of implementing government reform and rooting out deeply entrenched corruption. A historic visit by Pope John Paul II, improving relations with Iraq, and Assad’s release of 600 political prisoners early in his term signaled the potential for significant change. Those seeking liberalization were soon bitterly disappointed, however; while some changes, such as economic-related measures, slowly showed progress, many other reforms failed to materialize. The 2001 detention of pro-reform activists and the dwindling period of tentative reform that had marked the brief political opening known as the “Damascus Spring” cut these hopes short. In 2007, amid an opposition boycott, Assad secured his second term in office. Critics denounced the elections, in which Assad ran unopposed and achieved just under 100 percent of votes cast, as a sham.

In March 2011 antigovernment protests broke out in Syria, inspired by a wave of similar demonstrations elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa that had begun in December 2010. In the southwestern city of Darʿā, several people were killed on March 18 when security forces opened fire on protesters who were angered by the arrest of several children for writing antigovernment graffiti. Protests continued, and on March 23 more than 20 people were killed when security forces fired into crowds and raided a mosque where protesters were gathered. Following the crackdown in Darʿā, Assad’s spokeswoman denied that the government had ordered security forces to shoot protesters. She also announced that the government was considering implementing political reforms, including loosening restrictions on political parties and lifting Syria’s emergency law, which had been in place for 48 years. The announcement was dismissed by Syrian opposition figures. On March 25, following Friday prayers, rallies were held in cities across the country. Although security forces broke up some of the rallies, beating and arresting demonstrators, intense protests continued. In Damascus, to counter the opposition’s protests, large pro-government rallies were held. On March 29 the Syrian government announced the resignation of the cabinet, a gesture that acknowledged protesters’ calls for reform. The following day Assad made his first public appearance since unrest began, addressing the protests in a speech before the country’s legislature. He claimed that the protests had been instigated by a foreign conspiracy, but he acknowledged the legitimacy of some of the protesters’ concerns. He resisted the opposition’s calls for immediate reform, saying that the government would proceed with its plans to introduce reform gradually. Following the speech, Syrian state media announced that Assad had formed a commission to study the repeal of the emergency law.

As demonstrations occurred sporadically throughout the country, the Syrian government continued to attribute unrest to foreign conspiracies and sectarian tension. The government made a few concessions aimed at Syria’s conservative Muslims and the Kurdish minority. On April 6 the government dealt with two grievances of conservative Muslims, closing Syria’s only casino and reversing a 2010 law prohibiting female teachers from wearing the niqāb, a veil that covers the face. The government also announced that Nōrūz, a New Year festival celebrated by Kurds, would be made a state holiday.

However, as protests intensified and spread to additional cities, there was an escalation in the use of violence by Syrian security forces. On April 8 security forces opened fire on demonstrators in several Syrian cities, killing some 35 people. Amid reports that the death toll since the first protests in March had exceeded 200, international condemnation of the Syrian government mounted, with human rights organizations and foreign leaders calling for an immediate end to violence.

As security forces continued to use violence against protesters around the country, Assad appointed a new cabinet and pledged to institute political reforms and lift Syria’s emergency law. On April 19 the new cabinet passed measures that repealed the emergency law and dissolved Syria’s Supreme State Security Court, a special court used to try defendants accused of challenging the government. However, the government also took action to retain its power to suppress public protest, passing a new law requiring Syrians to obtain government permission before protesting. The newly appointed minister of the interior urged Syrians not to demonstrate, saying that the authorities would continue to treat demonstrations as a threat to public safety.

Soon after ending the emergency law, the Syrian government escalated its use of violence against protesters. On April 22 security forces fired on protesters who had assembled following Friday prayers, killing about 75. In spite of the international outcry provoked by the killings, the Syrian government launched new operations to silence protests, deploying large numbers of troops equipped with tanks and armoured personnel carriers to the cities of Darʿā, Bāniyās, and Ḥimṣ, three centres of antigovernment protest. In several areas of the country, the government imposed a communications blackout, shutting down telephone and Internet service. In Darʿā security forces cut the town’s water and electricity supplies.

As demonstrations continued to spread in Syria, the government increased its efforts to overwhelm protesters with military force, deploying soldiers and tanks to protest sites around the country. By early May the antigovernment protests reached Damascus. Protests in the city centre were violently suppressed, and Syrian government forces imposed security cordons in several Damascus suburbs in an attempt to restrict the movements of possible demonstrators. The European Union (EU) imposed sanctions including travel bans and asset freezes targeted against more than a dozen senior Syrian officials thought to be directing the government’s actions against the protesters. In addition an EU arms embargo was applied to the entire country.